Friends of Antiquity RD Milns Memorial Lecture

Location: Room E302, Forgan Smith Building, UQ St Lucia
Price: $10

 

Join UQ’s Friends of Antiquity at the 2023 RD Milns Memorial Lecture titled: Perpetuus vitas – enduring lives: the classics in contemporary life, presented by Major General Professor John Pearn AO RFD.

 

Our individual personal world is greatly enriched by the beauty of the natural world about us. The fauna and flora of this natural world bear scientific names which, of themselves, are living memorials to the heroes of antiquity. The names of the living creatures and plants in our world enjoin us with many of the central characters of that Classical world – a world rich in poetry and legend.

 

In particular, the stories from ancient Greece are represented in the names of the creatures which we encounter every day. Their contemporary form and beauty remind us of the gods and goddesses, conquerors and the conquered, and of the male and female figures whose characters have become common metaphors in modern life.

 

Emeritus Professor Bob Milns made the Classical world live for so many of us. A delight in, and identification with the Classics engenders a continuity in our contemporary lives today.

 

Major General Professor John Pearn AO RFD is a Senior Paediatrician at the Queensland Children’s Hospital. For 6 decades he has served as a senior clinician within the Faculty of Medicine at UQ and for 28 years as the Patron of the UQ Medical Society. He has published extensively in clinical medicine, medical genetics, toxicology and medical history, and made contributions to military medicine through operational service in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and Rwanda, and as the Surgeon General of the Australian Defence Force (1998-2000).

 

His contributions to Classical literature have included entries in The Chaucer Encyclopedia and numerous publications in both the numismatic and historical literature relating to the gods, goddesses and other significant characters in Ancient Greece and Rome, particularly in the context of the history of healthcare.